"Food for me was a connecting link to my grandmother, to my childhood, to my past. And what I found out is that for everybody, food is a connector to their roots, to their past in different ways. It gives you security; it gives you a profile of who you are, where you come from." - Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Pages

Saturday, February 11, 2012

We watched Kiran Rao's Dhobi Ghat today. I absolutely loved the movie and I think everyone who loves Mumbai will love this movie. Amir Khan and the actresses who played Shai and Yasmin were fantastic. I was really impressed by Prateik. He is his mother's son after all.

This is not your usual Bollywood Masala film. But I think the director has tried to capture the pulse of the city - Mumbai's changing skyline, constant construction work, crowd, traffic, train tracks, Arabian sea, Ganapati Visarjan, cosmopolitan culture and of course Dhobi Ghat. There is a character of an old lady who is Amir Khan's neighbor. She has a stunned expression throughout the movie. A friend told me that it seems this old lady is the director's interpretation of Mumbai - a stunned city!

In the "deleted scenes" of the DVD, Kiran rao talks about the yellow cake from Kayani Bakery that Yasmin cuts for her birthday. Last time when I went back home, I - in my own eccentricity - did a blind taste test for Kayani and Merwan Mawa cakes. and the winner was - in my humble opinion anyway- Merwan's!!